The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology.
Packet switching devices are deployed in a network to receive packet traffic (e.g., customer traffic) directly from end user devices or from another network. Packet switching devices may operate at different protocol layers, such as, but not limited to, packet switching performed by layer-3 routers or layer-2 bridges.